Guest Blogger Michelle Hamilton on The President’s Medium: Nettie Colburn

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin coined the term “Team of Rivals” to describe President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, but that was not the only team that Lincoln employed during the Civil War—virtually unknown was his “Team of Mediums.” While it is well known that Mary Lincoln frequently attended Spiritualist séances while living in the White House, historians have insisted that President Lincoln only attended a few séances in an attempt to humor and protect his mentally unstable wife. This narrative is incorrect. Following the death of their beloved son Willie President Abraham Lincoln and his wife became actively involved in the Spiritualist movement and formed friendships with the trance medium Nettie Colburn.

Born in upstate New York in 1841 Nettie Colburn first discovered that she was a Spiritualist medium following a childhood illness. Having developed her talent as trance medium, Nettie left home and traveled the country as a successful Spiritualist lecturer, one of the few careers open to women in the United States before the Civil War. In her memoir Nettie reflected on her career, writing, “It came to me in a sense unsought, and took me, an untaught child, from my humble home in the ranks of the laboring people, and led me forth, a teacher of the sublime truth of immortality opening to me the doors of wealthy and the prominent, as well as leading among the poor and lowly, speaking through my un-conscious lips words of strength and consolation, suited to all conditions, until everywhere, from the father’s quiet fireside to the palatial city mansion, I found only words of welcome and kindly care.”

By 1862, the petite, 21-year-old had become a successful and popular speaker on the Spiritualist lecture circuit. During one lecture, Nettie went into a trance where the medium claimed that she was informed by her spirit guide that she had been selected by a “Congress of spirits” comprised of prominent Americans who now resided on the other side for an important mission: she was to travel to Washington, D.C. where she would become a spiritual advisor to President Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning what the spirits wanted her to do, Nettie claimed that she was initially incredulous and concluded that she “would find but poor reception in the presence of the First Ruler of the Land.”

Despite her protests, Nettie Colburn found herself in the nation’s capital in December 1862 on family business. While lecturing in Baltimore, MD, Nettie received a letter from her younger brother who was seriously ill in a Union military hospital. Nettie’s brother begged for her assistance in getting a furlough so that he could return to their parents’ home to recover. Nettie rushed to her brother’s aide and quickly became acquainted with Washington, D.C.’s Spiritualist community. Through her new contacts she was invited to hold séances at the house of Cranston Laurie. The Laurie family had earned the reputation for “being remarkably under the spiritual influence.” Nettie latter recalled, “Mr. and Mrs. Laurie were both fine mediums.”

 

At the Laurie house, Nettie preformed séances in the family’s parlor where she met one of the Lauries’ clients, First Lady Mary Lincoln. During her first meeting with Mary Lincoln, Nettie wowed the First Lady with her talents. “Some new and powerful influence obtained possession of my organism and addressed Mrs. Lincoln, it seemed, with great clearness and force, upon matters of state,” Nettie recalled. Whatever the medium said during this meeting—and Nettie always claimed that while in a trance she had no memory of what she said—struck a chord with the First Lady. Following the séance, Mary Lincoln was so impressed that she is said to have declared, “This young lady must not leave Washington. I feel she must stay here, and Mr. Lincoln must hear what we have heard. It is all-important, and he must hear it.” Turning to Nettie, Mary Lincoln pleaded, “Don’t think of leaving Washington, I beg of you. Can you not remain with us?”

To keep Nettie in the capital, Mary Lincoln used her political clout as the President’ wife and arranged for her to be employed as a clerk for the Department of Agriculture. Besides assisting Nettie Colburn in finding employment, Mary Lincoln also assisted Nettie’s brother in receiving his furlough, thus began a pattern of mutual benefits for both the medium and the First Lady which would characterize their relationship.

Mary Lincoln was so impressed by Nettie that in late December 1862, the medium received an invitation to come to the White House. “I felt all the natural trepidation of a young girl about to enter the presence of the highest magistrate in our land, being fully impressed with the dignity of his office, and feeling that I was about to meet some superior being; and it was almost with trembling that I entered with my friends the Red Parlor at the White House, at eight evening (December 1862,” Nettie recalled. President Abraham Lincoln was amused by the sight of the petite medium. “Dropping his hand upon my head, he said, in a humorous tone, ‘so this is our ‘little Nellie’ is it, that we heard so much about,” the medium remembered President Lincoln saying.

After greeting the President and Mrs. Lincoln, Nettie went into a trance. According to Nettie, the spirits offered the President advice regarding the Emancipation Proclamation. “With the utmost solemnity and force of manner not to abate the terms of the issue, and not to delay its enforcement as a law beyond the opening of the year; and he was assured that it was to be the crowning event of his administration and his life; and that while he was being counseled by strong parties to defer the enforcement of it, hoping to supplant it by other measures and to delay action, he must in no wise heed such counsel, but stand firm to his convictions and fearlessly perform the work and fulfill the mission for which he had been raised up by an overruling Providence,” the spirits advised.

According to Nettie, her audience was shocked by her message, but the President confirmed that what she had to say was correct. “Under these circumstances that question is perfectly proper, as we are all friends. It is taking all my nerve and strength to withstand such pressure.” After a brief discussion over the spirits message the séance drew to a close. As Nettie was preparing to leave, President Lincoln turned to her and declared, “My child, you possess a very singular gift; but that it is of God, I have no doubt. I thank you for coming here tonight. It is more important than any perhaps can understand. I must leave you all now; but I hope to see you again.”

And indeed, Nettie would see President Lincoln again. One morning in February 1863, while the medium was staying with the Lauries’ the Spiritualists received a letter from Mary Lincoln that requested their services for the evening. Upon learning the contents of the letter, Nettie became controlled by her spirit guide, a 500-year-old Aztec princess called Pinkie, under the control of the spirit announced that the President would be accompanying his wife. Mr. Laurie rather questioned its accuracy; as he said it would be hardly advisable for President Lincoln to leave the White House to attend a spiritual séance anywhere; and that he did not consider it ‘good policy’ to do so,” Nettie remembered.

The spirit’s pronouncement proved correct. The President had decided to accompany his wife at the last minute. Nettie Colburn later recounted the scene in her memoir, “He came down from a cabinet meeting as Mrs. Lincoln and her friends were about to enter the carriage, and asked them where they were going. She replied, ‘To Georgetown; to a circle.’ He answered, ‘Hold on a moment, I will go with you.’” This shocked his wife who declared to Nettie Colburn, “Yes…and I was never so surprised in my life.”

As part of the evening’s events the spirits communicated with President Lincoln. “I believe that Mr. Lincoln was satisfied and convinced that the communications he received through me were wholly independent of my volition, and in every way superior to any manifestation that could have been given me as a physical being.” As the evening wore on the spirits got frisky and caused a piano to levitate. The séance then concluded, and the Lincolns’ returned to the burdens of the Civil War. “I believe that Mr. Lincoln was satisfied and convinced that the communications he received through me were wholly independent of my own volition, and in every way superior to any manifestation that could have been given me as a physical being,” Nettie declared in her memoir.

Throughout her memoir, Nettie Colburn took great pains to assert that even though President Lincoln did frequently attend Spiritualist gatherings, she did not claim that President Lincoln was a Spiritualist. “It has frequently been stated that Mr. Lincoln was a Spiritualist. That question is left open for general judgment,” Nettie wrote. Instead, the medium left it up to the reader to form their own opinion. Regarding the First Lady’s belief in Spiritualism, the medium was more definitive stating, “It is also true that Mrs. Lincoln was more enthusiastic regarding the subject than her husband, and openly and avowedly professed herself connected with the new religion.”

As the months passed, Mary Lincoln and Nettie Colburn formed a symbiotic relationship dependent on the mediums ability to channel the spirits. An incident that occurred during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863 perfectly illustrated their relationship. Because of the services that Nettie preformed for the Lincolns and was trusted by the First Lady, the medium was granted full access to the White House. This included the freedom to obtain flowers from the White House greenhouse. According to Nettie, one morning, the medium decided to obtain some flowers to bring to her father and brother who were patients at one of the countless military hospitals in the capital. “Intending to visit him, I went by permission of Mrs. Lincoln to the White House hothouse to obtain a bouquet of flowers for him,” Nettie recalled.

Arriving at the private entrance of the White House with her friend Parthenia “Parnie” Hannum, the young women expected to be given a pre-cut bouquet. Instead, Nettie found Mrs. Cuthbert, the White House housekeeper waiting for her. “Oh, my dear young ladies,” Mrs. Cuthbert exclaimed, “the madam is deestracted. Come to her, I beg of you. She wants you very much.” Following the French born housekeeper into the President’s private quarters, Nettie and her friend found the First Lady in her wrapper with her hair down frantically pacing up and down her room. Turning to the medium, Mary Lincoln explained the reason for her distress. The Battle of Chancellorsville was raging and the President had just received a telegram announcing that the Union army was in the process of being destroyed with numerous officers dead. “Will you sit down a few moments and see if you can get anything from ‘beyond?’” the desperate First Lady pleaded.

Not wishing to pass up such an opportunity to display her skill, Nettie complied with Mary Lincoln’s request. Nettie then preformed a short séance which calmed Mary’s frayed nerves. Upon the conclusion of Nettie’s impromptu séance, President Lincoln entered his wife’s bedroom. Mary Lincoln was enthusiastic over what Nettie had just done for her and according to the medium, “Mrs. Lincoln instantly began to tell him what had been said.” Seizing the moment, Nettie performed another séance for the benefit of the President and Mrs. Cuthbert. According to the medium the message she relayed to Abraham and Mary Lincoln from the other side brought reassurance that the apocalyptic tone of the telegram had been false. “My friend said she had never seen me more impressive or convincing when under control,” Nettie bragged in her memoir.

Grateful for the reassuring message, Mary Lincoln expressed her gratitude by giving the women large bouquets of flowers. “I need not say that our hands were well filled with flowers when we left the White House,” Nettie concluded. This incident illustrated the type of relationship Mary Lincoln had with the medium. Mary Lincoln relayed on Nettie for her skills as a medium and only brought her into the White House to employ Nettie to do a séance for her. Nettie in turn complied with the First Lady’s request due to the material advantages it brought her. Despite remaining discreet, Nettie’s activities in the White House became well known within the Spiritualist community.

On October 26, 1863, Abraham Lincoln received a note from his close friend Joshua Speed. Throughout the war Speed made periodic visits to the nation’s capital and it was during one of these visits that he decided to write a letter of introduction for the medium Nettie Colburn and her friend Anna Cosby. “My very good friend Mrs Cosby and Miss Netty Colburn her friend desire an interview with you,” Speed wrote. President Lincoln was already well acquainted with the medium and Anna Cosby. Nettie had just made her acquaintance with Speed in the fall of 1863 upon her return to Washington, D.C. after taking a trip to New York to visit her parents. At the time, Nettie was residing at the home of her friend Anna Cosby whose husband had just lost his position as consul to Switzerland amid accusations of associating with Confederate officials while at his post in Geneva. The medium was concerned that because of her friend’s fall from grace her access to the Lincoln White House would be affected. This would have hurt Nettie’s budding political power. Her access to the President and First Lady had become well known throughout Washington, D.C and people flocked to Nettie to beg her to plead their case with the President. The medium needed to be able to see Lincoln on the behalf of these claimants.

One of these petitioners, Colonel Morgan H. Chrysler had summoned Nettie back to the capital from her vacation in New York to aide him in acquiring the command of his brigade. “He had confidence in my power to reach the President, and he had also confidence in the unseen powers that controlled me, and he earnestly requested that I should make the effort in his behalf, offering to defray all expenses, which he did,” Nettie stated. In an attempt to ensure her admittance to the President, Nettie likely asked Joshua Speed to write her a letter of introduction. Joshua Speed, impressed by a séance Nettie Colburn had done for him gladly, performed the task. “It will I am sure be some relief from the tedious round of office seekers to see two such agreeable ladies,” Speed wrote.

Joshua Speed was quick to add that they were mediums gushing, “They are both mediums & believe in the spirits—and are I am quite sure very close spirits themselves.” In the postscript, Speed added, “Mrs. Cosby says she is not a medium though I am quite sure she is or should be.” The medium’s concerns were unfounded. Upon her arrival at the White House, she was admitted into the President’s office where Lincoln gave her a friendly welcome. “How do you do, Miss Nettie?—glad to see you back among us,” President Lincoln announced. Though unable to help Nettie, the President appeared happy to see the young medium again and directed her to take the matter to the Secretary of the War. Undeterred, Nettie visited Edwin Stanton and successfully persuaded the cantankerous Secretary to grant her request.

Throughout 1864 Mary Lincoln continued to summon Nettie and her Spiritualists friends to the White House. Shortly after Nettie’s public lecture, the medium was invited to the White House to show off her talents for the First Lady’s friends. Mary Lincoln declared she had a friend she wanted Nettie to meet, but she wanted to test the medium’s powers and would not tell her who the guest was. Instead, Mary decided that Nettie’s spirit guide Pinkie should be able to guess the true identity of the mysterious guest. Naturally, according to Nettie the undefeatable Pinkie correctly guessed that the guest was a military officer who turned out to be none other than General Daniel Sickles. What made this séance stand out, besides the presence of the Union Army’s most notorious general, was that in a rare moment of bravado Nettie Colburn gave herself credit for the creation of the Freedman’s Bureau.

During this séance, Nettie, speaking for the spirits, lectured the President about the condition of the freed slaves. “While the spirits realized fully the many cares resting upon the President, there was duty to perform that could not be neglected—a duty that demanded immediate attention. They counseled him in the strongest terms to prove the truth of their statements, extravagant as they seemed, by appointing a special committee, whose duty it should be to investigate the condition of these people, and to receive their report in person, and on no account to receive it second hand,” Nettie instructed.

In her memoir it is clear that Nettie Colburn fully believed that the President took her message to heart. A few weeks later while visiting her parents in Hartford, New York, her father showed her a newspaper article reporting that President Lincoln was creating a commission to evaluate the condition of the freedmen. “This item confirmed what I had told my father more than a week before of my recent sitting at the White House. It also proved that Mr. Lincoln considered the counsel he had received through me sufficient importance to engage his attention, as he had literally followed the direction given him by the spirit world,” Maynard crowed.

As the strain of the Civil War began to emotionally and physically separate Abraham and Mary Lincoln, the couple’s mutual interest in Spiritualism was one thing that kept them together. It is highly likely that Mary Lincoln scheduled a number these séances in a bid to spend time alone with her husband. “During the latter part of February, and the month of March [1864], I had a number of séances with President Lincoln and his wife; but, as there were no other witnesses, and as they did not inform me of the nature, but simply allude to the fact. These séances took place by appointment. At the close of one, Mrs. Lincoln would make an appointment, engaging me to come at a certain hour of the day, which usually would be in the vicinity of one o’clock, the time when Mr. Lincoln usually partook of his luncheon, which generally occupied about half to three-quarters of an hour,” Nettie disclosed. Concerning the issues discussed during the séances, the medium would only admit, “Many subjects of interest were discussed at the various meetings I had with Mr. Lincoln.”

As the Civil War drew to the close, Nettie Colburn asserted in her memoir that she tried to warn the President that his life was in danger. During her last audience with Abraham Lincoln in February 1865 the medium again tried to voice her concern. “He turned half impatiently away and said, ‘Yes, I know. I have letters from all over the country from your kind of people—mediums, I mean—warning me against some dreadful plot against my life. But I don’t think the knife is made, or the bullet run, that will reach it. Besides, nobody wants to harm me,’” Nettie recalled Lincoln saying. The President then tried to soothe the medium, “Well, Miss Nettie, I shall live till my work is done, and no earthly power can prevent it. And then it doesn’t matter so that I am ready—and that I ever mean to be.” Nettie would never see President Lincoln again. On April 14, 1865 Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. With the President’s death, the “Team of Mediums” disbanded. After the Civil War, Nettie married but continued to lecture and perform séances. On her deathbed in 1890 Nettie Colburn Maynard penned her memoirs Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? Or, Curious Revelations from the Life of a Trance Medium in which she recorded her experiences. Without Nettie’s memoir a valuable chapter in American history would have been lost.


Sources:
Hamilton, Michelle L. “I Would Still Be Drowned in Tears”: Spiritualism in Abraham Lincoln’s White House.

Maynard, Nettie Colburn. Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? Or, Curious Revelations from the Life of a Trance Medium

Michelle L. Hamilton is a Historian, lecturer, Civil War re-enactor and Grad Student working on her MA in History at San Diego State University. She is also the author of “I Would Still Be Drowned in Tears”: Spiritualism in Abraham Lincoln’s White House.

Scandalous Book Review: Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly

"I was born a slave - - was a child of slave parents - - therefore I came upon the earth free in God-like thought, but fettered in action."

Elizabeth Keckly

While looking through my huge pile of research books while preparing this month's series on Presidential scandals, I discovered that I had an advance reader's coppy of Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly that had been given to me by an old friend who has since passed away. Curiously I picked it up and began reading. While Lincoln has long been one of my favorite presidents, I didn't know a great deal about Mary Lincoln apart from the fact that like Lincoln, she was born in Kentucky, and her son had her committed to an asylum several years after Lincoln's death (dramatized in the play, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln).

What intrigued me about the book was that it was a dual biography of Mary Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckly, the freed slave who became Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker and her closest friend. I had never heard of Elizabeth Keckly before reading this book, but her story now has been intrigued. Elizabeth Keckly was born in 1818, the same year as Mary Todd Lincoln, but the circumstances of her birth were far different from that of the future Mrs. President. Elizabeth's mother Aggy was owned by the Burwell family of Virginia. Her father was not George Hobbs, but Armistead Burwell, Aggy's owner. Elizabeth was aware of who her real father was, but like most slave owning families, her parentage was never spoken of. However, she learned to read and write, and was allowed to read books in the house, despite the fact that it was illegal for slaves to learn to read and write.

At the age of 14, Elizabeth was given 'on loan' to Armistead's son Robert Burwell and his wife Anna, to work as a house slave in Petersburg, VA (she had actually been promised to the youngest Burwell daughter Elizabeth). Elizabeth and Anna didn't exactly get along, leading Anna to ask for the assistance of a neighbor, William Bingham to subdue her, by beating her severely. Elizabeth's life became even worse, while the Burwell family ran a boarding school in Hillsborough, North Carolina. She was raped repeatedly by Alexander Kirkland, a neighbor of the Burwells, leaving her pregnant with her son George. Kirkland died at the age of 36. Elizabeth and her son George by this time had moved back to Virginia. Eventually Elizabeth ended up living with another Burwell daughter, Anna Garland in St. Louis.


It was in St. Louis that Elizabeth first began working as a seamstress, virtually supporting the entire Garland family solely by her wages. Living in St. Louis gave Elizabeth the opportunity to move freely among St. Louis's free black population. Determined to gain her freedom, Elizabeth repeatedly pestered Hugh Garland for the right to work for her freedom. Finally after two years, he told her that she could gain her freedom and her son's for the cost of $1,200. Elizabeth had now made connections as well among the well-to-do white population of St. Louis, while working as a dressmaker. It was also in St. Louis, that Elizabeth married James Keckly. However, she soon found out that Keckly had lied to her about being free. With the help of their patronage, Elizabeth was able to buy her freedom and that of her son's. She sent him to Wilberforce University in Ohio (named after William Wilberforce, the great English abolitionist), while she settled in Washington, DC.


It was in Washington, DC that Elizabeth Keckly and Mary Todd Lincoln were destined to meet. Through her St. Louis connections, Elizabeth was soon making dresses for some of the most influential women in Washington, including Mrs. Varina Davis, wife of Senator Jefferson Davis. Varina Davis was so taken with her, that when war was declared, she tried to convince Elizabeth to join her down South. However it was another woman, Mrs. Margaret McLean who made the introductions between Elizabeth and Mary Todd Lincoln on the day of the inauguration. Mary invited Elizabeth back the next day to interview for the position of her dressmaker. The last to be interviewed, Elizabeth impressed Mary and soon she was making dresses for Mrs. President.


Elizabeth Keckly was soon not just Mary's dressmaker but her confidante. Mary hadn't made many friends in Washington among the wives of the cabinet members or Congress. For the first time in her life she didn't have a ready made support system of friends and family. She didn't help matters by going on a major spending spree during Lincoln's first year in office which coincided with the first year of the Civil War. She was also suspected of being a secret Southern spy. Like many families in the border states, half of Mary's family fought for the Union, the other half for the Confederacy.


Mary was also known for being difficult to get along with. After years of living in a slave society, she had found it difficult to deal with white servants while living in Springfield. She also may been suffering from bipolar disorder along with her frequent migraines. Rosetta Wells wrote Keckly was "the only person in Washington who could get along with Mrs. Lincoln, when she became mad with anybody for talking about her and criticizing her husband." She was incredibly lonely, she had thought that she would be more of a help-mate to Lincoln but found herself shut out of the 'boy's club,' in a way that she hadn't been in Springfield.


Soon Elizabeth was taking care of Mary's two sons Willie and Tad, as well as combing the President's hair. During this time, Elizabeth also enjoyed semi-celebrity status within the black community, as well as being accepted by the black servants in the White House who were notorious for snubbing darker skinned blacks. She used her various connections to establish the Contraband Relief Association; a group designed to help the suffering and disadvantaged black people. Keckly petitioned and solicited for donations, and received frequent contributions from both the President and the First Lady. When Willie Lincoln died, Mary began to rely on Elizabeth more and more. Elizabeth had her own cross to bear, her son George had died in one of the first battles of the Civil War. Light enough to pass for white, he joined the army as a white man.


After the assassination, Mary Todd Lincoln seemed alone and friendless. The one person she could talk to was Elizabeth Keckly. Keckly accompanied Mary to Chicago and stayed with her for several months. Later on, she went to New York with Mary to try and help her to sell her clothes and jewelry. She even tried to raise money among the black community for Mrs. Lincoln but her efforts came to naught. The rift between the two women began when Elizabeth donated items that Mrs. Lincoln had given her after the president's assassination to Wilberforce University to help them rebuild a building after a devastating fire. But the final blow came when Elizabeth decided to publish her memoirs.


Elizabeth came to this decision for two reasons: after spending a year in New York trying to help Mrs. Lincoln, her business in Washington had suffered irreperable damage. And two, in a way, Elizabeth thought that she could help restore Mrs. Lincoln's reputation that had been damaged when it came out that she was forced to sell her jewels and clothing to raise money. Elizabeth wasn't the first former slave to write her memoirs, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman among others had written theirs. But Elizabeth was the only to have had a bird's eye view into the Lincoln White House. Nowadays, the public is used to every Tom, Dick and Karl Rove writing of their time in the White House, but this was a relatively new thing in the 19th century, and the idea that a former slave would write about working for her former employees well that beyond the pale. Of course, the publisher sensationalized the book in such a way, that it made it look like Elizabeth was cashing in on Lincoln's name and reputation.


Mary Todd Lincoln felt betrayed. Not only had Elizabeth disclosed personal conversations, but the book also published her private letters to Elizabeth. Dr. Fleischner writes in her book that, "Lizzy's intentions, like the spelling of her name, would thereafter be lost in history. At the age of fifty, she had violated Victorian codes not only of friendship and privacy, but of race, gender, and class. Not surprisingly, the newspapers that attacked Mary Lincoln in the fall, in the spring now leapt to her defense... The social threat represented by this black woman's agency also provoked other readers, and someone produced an ugly and viciously racist parody called "Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman who took work in from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis and signed with an "X," the mark of "Betsey Kickley (nigger)," denoting its supposed author's illiteracy." Elizabeth always suspected that Robert Todd Lincoln helped to surpress the memoir.


The last years of Elizabeth's life were as hard as Mary Todd Lincoln's. She continued to sew and teach, but her white clientele stopped calling. Eventually she ended up having to sell her Lincoln memoribilia for the rock bottom price of $250. Eventually she obtained a faculty position at Wilberforce University as head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science. In her 80's, she was back in DC, living in a home for colored destitute women where she died in 1907.


Jennifer Fleischer writes in Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, "Perhaps the most poignant illustration of the different fates of these two women is found in their final resting places. While Mary Lincoln lies buried in Springfield in a vault with her husband and sons, Elizabeth Keckly's remains have disappeared. In the 1960s, a developer paved over the Harmony Cemetery in Washington where Lizzy was buried, and when the graves were moved to a new cemetery, her unclaimed remains were placed in an unmarked grave—like those of her mother, slave father, and son."


After her death, Elizabeth suffered the further indignity of having not only her memoirs questioned, but whether or not she existed at all. In 1935, a journalist named David Rankin Barbee, stated that not only had Elizabeth Keckly not written her autobiography, but that she never existed at all. Barbee claimed that the abolitionist writer Jane Swisshelm was the true author and had written it to advance her abolitionist cause. Many people who read the article challenged his claim, and came forward citing personal and/or secondary acquaintance. In an effort to 'clarify' his erroneous statements, Barbee backtracked and said that it "was not that no such person as Elizabeth Keckly existed, but that "no such person as Elizabeth Keckley wrote the celebrated Lincoln book." Good save!

Thank god for Jennifer Fleischer for writing this book and rescuing Elizabeth Keckly from obscurity. One of the most remarkable thing about this book is not only the sympathy that Fleischer shows for Mary Todd Lincoln but also the respect that she shows Elizabeth Keckly. The book is not only a dual biography but it is also a social history about the relationship between whites and their slaves, but also the minefield that Elizabeth Keckly had to constantly walk between the white and black worlds.

At times, I wished for a little less about Mary Todd Lincoln and more about Elizabeth Keckly. Probably because so much as been written, both sympathetic and non-sympathetic, about her. This book is a wonderful addition to any fan of Lincoln, or anyone who is interested in the history of women. I would love to see HBO do a film about Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckly, particularly since this year in Lincoln's 200th birthday.

Sources and other information:

Jennifer Fleischner (2003). Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly The Remarkable Story of the Friendship between a First Lady and a Former Slave. Broadway Books
Behind the Scenes by Elizabeth Keckly

Fiction:
An Unlikely Friendship: A Novel of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley, Ann Rinaldi

Performers:

Laura Keyes: Laura performs a one-woman show about Mary Todd Lincoln